Book Talk: The Rest of God

When’s the last time you honored Sabbath? Last week, last month, last year? Do you even take a day of rest consistently? Do you honor the Sabbath because God said so or only when it’s convenient for you?

This book was recommended and given to us at church when we had service about Sabbath.

It is so easy to constantly be on the go and convince ourselves that being busy is a good thing. Working more to get ahead is a good thing. But in actuality it’s not. It’s counterproductive. To sit and be still is what our hearts and souls need. Without Sabbath, we can never really rest and know God. In the stillness is when we get to know and understand God.

“Be Still, and know that I am God.”

Psalm 46:10

This book is so good. It truly struck a note with me to rest and to be still. Not just be still, but to enjoy doing absolutely nothing. Not associating guilt with resting, because if we’re being honest, we often do.

The story/chapter that really stood out to me was Chapter 3: The Rest of God: Stopping to Find What’s Missing. In this chapter, Mark tells a story of his wife’s grandmother during a time of gold fever. She was polishing a stone that was too big to move, and thought to make it pretty since she couldn’t move it. As she was sanding away, she noticed gold flecks, and the gold fever got the best of her. She started to sand faster and harder, and the faster she went, the more gold she saw. As she came to a rest, she noticed the back of her wedding band, a family heirloom, was as thin as cheese wire. The gold she saw, was the gold from her wedding band, fool’s gold. It was so sad and honestly I teared up.

How many times do we sacrifice something so important, so meaningful, for something that was never really there, that was so shallow it didn’t even exist? But we were too busy, too in a hurry to notice.

This book is so good and by the time you are done reading this, you will never look at Sabbath the same way again. You will never experience rest the same way again. You will never forget to just be still, again.